Here's every unmade Fantastic Four movie, and why they were canceled. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's classic Marvel superhero family has been around since the early 1960s, and has seen their fair share of ups and downs over the years. However, when it comes to their live-action adaptations on the big screen, the characters have always seemed to struggle more than one might expect for such an iconic comic book franchise. Then again, it's one thing to portray a group of heroes whose powers include super elasticity, invisibility, flammability, and being a human rock on the printed page, but another to try and make them feel plausible in the real world.
Whereas Tim Story's Fantastic Four (2005) and its sequel, 2007's Rise of the Silver Surfer, embraced a more light-hearted and often silly tone, Josh Trank's 2015 Fant4stic reboot went to the opposite extreme, infusing the eponymous team with a heavy dose of Cronenbergian body horror. None of these movies were exactly smash-hits either, with Story's films earning tepid reviews and Trank's project flopping both critically and commercially. Of course, as has been well-documented by this point, Trank's Fantastic Four reboot was doomed well before it opened thanks to its tumultuous development and behind the scenes problems.
Speaking of doom (make that Doctor Doom), there've also been a handful of Fantastic Four films planned, but never made over the years - and that's not counting Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, the never-released low-budget 1994 film adaptation that was only developed so producer Bernd Eichinger could hold onto his option to develop a proper movie version one day. So, with that said, here's every Fantastic Four project that didn't even make it that far.
Peyton Reed’s Fantastic Four
Shortly after Corman's The Fantastic Four was produced, Fox started moving forward with an official big-budget adaptation of the superhero property in 1995. The project evolved into a revolving door for American comedy directors over the half-dozen years that followed, with Chris Columbus (Home Alone 1 & 2, Mrs. Doubtfire), Sam Weisman (George of the Jungle), Peter Segal (Tommy Boy), and Raja Gosnell (Home Alone 3, Scooby-Doo) all coming aboard to call the shots before later stepping down. Eventually, in April 2001, it found its way into the hands of future Ant-Man director Peyton Reed, then fresh off his feature directorial debut on Bring It On.
During an interview with Yahoo! to promote Ant-Man's release in 2015, Reed explained why he left Fantastic Four after spending about a year working on it with multiple writers, saying "It became clear after a while that Fox had a very different movie in mind and they were also chasing a release date... so we ended up parting company. I felt like I couldn’t make the movie I wanted to make in that environment.” The director shed more light on his abandoned vision in 2019, revealing it was set in the '60s and likening its structure to The Beatles' 1964 musical-comedy A Hard Day's Night. Tellingly, after leaving the movie, Reed would go on to scratch his '60s itch with 2003's Down with Love, an homage to the famous Rock Hudson and Doris Day rom-coms from the '50s and '60s.
Fox’s Marvel Movie Crossover
After Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surface grossed less (but cost more to make) than its predecessor, Fox abandoned its plans to continue Story's movies in favor of rebooting the property. Additionally, in 2011, the studio recruited writers Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller - who also co-wrote X-Men: First Class and worked on an early script draft for the Fantastic Four reboot - to write a crossover that would feature all of the Marvel characters Fox owned at the time, including the X-Men, Daredevil, and Fantastic Four. According to THR, the script began with Johnny Storm inadvertently wreaking havoc on Manhattan during a battle with Molecule Man. This leads to the passage of a superhero registration act that, unsurprisingly, proves divisive within the larger superhero community.
Basically a Fox-Marvel version of the famous Civil War comic book storyline, the project was abandoned after First Class became a hit, prompting Fox to focus on making X-Men: Days of Future Past and continue developing the Fantastic Four reboot instead. Interestingly, THR also says Fox hired famous comic book writer Warren Ellis to assemble the treatment for an X-Men vs. Fantastic Four film at some point, though it's unclear if things went much further than that. Had Stentz and Miller's crossover happened, however, it would've concluded with a post-credits scene setting the stage for a Skrull invasion in the sequel.
Silver Surfer Spinoff
Well before Tim Story's Fantastic Four hit theaters in 2005, Fox had plans to release a Silver Surfer movie in 1998, with Geoffrey Wright (Cherry Falls) directing from a script by Richard Jefferies (Cold Creek Manor). However, when the studio's first Fantastic Four film took longer than expected to get off the ground, they shifted the spinoff to the back-burner and left it there for a decade, until Rise of the Silver Surfer was released in 2007. The spinoff began to move forward again after that, with J. Michael Straczynski being hired to write the script the same year. As mentioned earlier, though, the Story-led Fantastic Four series was later abandoned after Rise of the Silver Surfer performed below expectations, and Fox thusly shifted its efforts to developing a reboot in 2009.
When interviewed at SDCC in 2007, Straczynski confirmed his script "picks up right where ['Rise of the Silver Surfer'] left off" with its post-credits scene, which shows the Surfer seemingly dead and floating in space only to reveal he's still alive. According to Straczynski, the spinoff would've explored his origins from there, while at the same time incorporating Galactus much more than Rise of the Silver Surfer did. Interestingly, following the failure of the Fantastic Four reboot, THR reported Fox had secretly started working on a Silver Surfer spinoff again in 2018, with comic book writer Brian K. Vaughn handling the script. Like all of the unmade Fox-Marvel projects at the time, though, the film was later canceled after Disney finalized its purchase of Fox's entertainment assets and handed its Marvel IPs over to Marvel Studios.
Noah Hawley’s Doctor Doom
The villainous Doctor Victor Von Doom has appeared in all four live-action Fantastic Four movies produced to date, with Joseph Culp, Julian McMahon, and Toby Kebbell all playing the character at different times. Nevertheless, it came as a surprise when Fargo and Legion showrunner Noah Hawley revealed his plans to write and direct a Doctor Doom solo film for Fox at the 2017 SDCC. In subsequent interviews, Hawley described his vision as an antihero story and "a mixture of genres," much in the same way Captain America: The Winter Soldier blends a superhero movie with a '70s-style political thriller.
The project wasn't immediately canceled in the wake of Disney buying Fox, either; as recently as June 2019, Hawley confirmed he had met with Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige to discuss the film. Given the lack of updates since then, though, it's safe to presume Hawley's Doctor Doom spinoff has been (most likely, permanently) shelved. With Marvel Studios confirmed to be working on a Fantastic Four movie reboot for the MCU, it simply wouldn't make sense for them to prioritize development of a spinoff featuring the team's most well-known antagonist at this stage, anyway.
Fant4stic 2
It's easy to forget that Fox once had its eye on making a sequel to Trank's Fant4stic film, and even went so far as to schedule it for a Summer 2017 release ahead of the latter's theatrical opening. Obviously, the sequel never happened after Trank's movie bombed, but that didn't stop producer-writer Simon Kinberg and certain members of the Fant4stic cast from saying they were open to making it for years after. Of course, even Kinberg admitted at the time he had no idea if Fox was actually interested in a sequel after everything that had gone wrong on Trank's reboot, saying in February 2017 "One of the lessons we learned on that movie is that we want to make sure we get it 100% right, because we will not get another chance with the fans." The pipe dream was finally put to rest later that year, when Disney began its acquisition of Fox and the Fantastic Four with it.